what keeps women out of ICT4D projects?
08:11, 12 August 2010
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
It surprises a lot of people to learn that what keeps women and girls out of telecenters/telecentres (free or low-cost public access points for the Internet). It's usually not cost. Rather, what keeps women away is often cultural issues and perceptions.
The Association for Progressive Communications has a Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) that has been used in ICT4D projects to incorporate an aspect that is often overlooked when a project is first designed: the needs of women. Recent use of APC's GEM found that culture is a bigger barrier to Bangladeshi girls going online than lack of money or computers, and that women farmers in a rural area of Peru were reluctant to use computers and the internet from a nearby telecenter because they thought they were just for children, no one had told them how they could use them to help their farming be more successful and because there are security issues for women to use public transport to get to the centers. In fact, APC has found that women over the age of 35 are often times considered “too old” by younger people and men to use ICTs and learn about computer technology.
Women's Access to Public Internet Centers in Transitional and Developing Countries is of particular interest to me. In fact, living in rural Oregon has made me concerned about women's access to the Internet in the USA, as I hear women here that are my age (Gen X) or older say something I've never heard in any transitional or developing country: "I don't have an email address. Email my husband/son/daughter and he/she will print the message out for me." Ouch! I may be organizing a series of computer and Internet workshops for women right here in my own village soon... And I have heard 20 somethings right here in the USA say "She can't use a computer. She's too old!" Can you imagine if they had made such a statement about an ethnic group and the outrage that would ensue?
I've updated this web page to encourage ICT-related projects to think about the needs of women and girls in accessing training and resources. But the resources are definitely not just for developing countries.
Tags: ICT4D, net2thinktank, NetSquared, access
